Abstract: The research of inertial confinement fusion demands a streak image tube with femtosecond temporal resolution and large dynamic range. In order to obtain a setup in the practical application, a novel soft X-ray streak image tube was proposed and designed. A planar symmetric electrostatic cylindrical lens with five electrodes was introduced into the image tube model, which has a strong ability to focus the electron beam, and has no cross-over effects as in the axial-symmetrical system. The cylindrical lens can shorten the length of image tube, reduce the transit time dispersion, and restrain space charge effects, thus enlarging the dynamic range and improving the temporal resolution. The simulation results show that if the photoelectron’s initial energy spread is 1.6 eV, and the slit area i